by Malory Antony
Jackson Stentham sits at the edge of the bed. He’s one week into the world, and he’s spent it working out. On an intellectual level, he knows that his muscles haven’t atrophied. But he’s spent four hours every day at the gym, trying to excoriate the feeling of weakness that sits heavy in his thighs, the strange delicacy situated in his biceps. It helps that, when he’s working out, he struggles less to repress those semi-erotic dreams of decay. When he’s lying in bed, alone, it’s harder to ignore the seductive truth: if his muscles atrophied, he’d be sent under less often.
Jackson Stentham (Jax to his five friends) is getting ready to go. His luggage is packed on the bedspread; everything he needs is segmented into neat cubes. He’s got the book he’s been reading for the past seven cycles, an army of polo shirts and enough plain black briefs for eternity. He’s going to Atlantis, that's what they told him. He’s going to fight five, twenty, five-hundred mega sharks. He knows that the people there may not like him at first; his propensity for straight-talking and witty one-liners can be a hard sell. Once he fights those sharks, though, it’s all going to change. They’re going to listen to him and, maybe, when he rescues the daughter of the high priestess from a particularly large mega-shark, he might even fall in love. He might even be loved in return. He might be happy down there, until she inevitably dies several years in the future. That’s his sickness, he thinks: even at the start, he’s thinking about the sequel. Even before he’s on set, he can see the sharks circling.
Jackson Stentham is on another bed, in another hotel room. He’s a star, featuring in a franchise of his own, or maybe it’s a television series. Either way, everyone loves him and his gruff charm. That’s what his five friends tell him. Their companionship keeps him grounded, even when he gets disoriented running lines. His wife texts him to say, missing you bad boy, and he is once again grounded. Grounded, even as he can’t recall if this is the story where he’s the loveable assassin, or the good-cop-turned-bad-cop-turned-good-again. Grounded, in that he certainly isn’t seeing any sharks. He is grounded and he is going to deliver on another project. He doesn’t want to repeat the performance of waking up cold and alone in a pool of effluvial fluid on dirty lino; he’s committed to getting his current lines right.
Jackson Stentham is five months out, and he’s off-set. Better yet, he’s at home with his beautiful wife and his wonderful children. He’s looking at them from a distance, smiling wide and holding out for his therapy appointment in an hour. He’s counting seven things he can hear, seven things he can see and he’s doing the dishes. For all his practiced masculinity, he knows a big part of being a man is knowing when to help out his wife. In the dishwater, sharks splash and nip at his hands. They aren’t there, but he sees them all the same, kissing against his fingertips while he’s scrubbing. He’s thinking of telling his therapist that he’s at home with the sharks now, just like he’s at home with his beautiful wife and his wonderful children. In an hour though, he won’t say a thing. Acknowledging hallucinations is a one-way trip back to the tank, even though the past two reboots have done little to curb their presence. So, when he’s on the Zoom call in an hour, he smiles, and he raises an eyebrow wryly, and he cracks self-deprecating jokes. He’s telling her, as best he can, that he’s doing good, or good enough. He’s saying, the only way he can, please don’t put me under again.
Jackson Stentham is back on set, practicing his facial expressions in the mirror before hair and makeup come in to perfect him. The eyebrow raise is somewhat of a tic now, so he’s trying to train his face out of it. He knows that the sad scene doesn’t work when he resembles a smug hyena. He’s also been thinking that he’d like to branch out, could get into a romantic comedy or two, if only they’d cast him. It’s on the list of things he’s going to talk to his therapist about. He’s not philosophical but his mind’s been wandering between scripts lately. He wants to know if the way he’s built precludes his believability as a romantic lead, like, when was the last time a bald man headed up one of those films? And would he be a different person if he didn’t have abs? He knows he’d look physically different, but he’s worried he’s got some kind of spiritual muscle that’s caulked him against other shapes, other roles.
Jackson Stentham is at home with his beautiful wife and his wonderful children. He’s fresh out of the vat, but that doesn’t matter. He’s learning, what to show of himself and what his audience don’t want to see. It doesn’t matter, anyway. His wife is so beautiful, and his children are so wonderful, and he’s at home, and he’s thankful. He’s scanning for sharks but all he can see is his children.
Jackson Stentham is back on set, and he’s swimming with sharks that aren’t there. For all their unreality, he can’t understand why they don’t push back against the boundaries of their sharkdom. If they aren’t even real in the first instance, shouldn’t they have other choices, unbound as they are by their unreal bodies? He palpates his stomach as he swims on his back, and wonders if he’d still be Jackson if he dug a valley into his intestines, or grew a gut. He doesn’t know what to call it, this urge to know whether his contraction or expansion would press on the fabric of the world. What he does know, is that he won’t be saying this to his therapist. Even without disclosure of his stranger thoughts, he’s been in and out so much lately that the circles are making him dizzy.
Jackson Stentham is sitting on the edge of a bed at home, and he’s enjoying the feel of clean sheets on his legs. He’s taken a brief reprieve from his beautiful wife in the guest room, and he’s thinking about the way sharks cut through water as though they aren’t there at all. He’s been shaved, or maybe he’s been shaving, to get into his wetsuit in preparation for his next project. He’s holding his calves and he’s thinking about where in his body his self might be, if he ever needed to cut it out. But he tries to rein that thought in. He’s getting ready for another shark fight, and he doesn’t want to leave any psychic blood in the ether.
Jackson Stentham is coming to in a pool of green goo, sprawled on lino that has seen better days. He’s a star and he’s on the floor, alone, in a bath of amniotic fluids. He’s a star and he’s alone, and he’s on the floor, ready to start anew.
Jackson Stentham on set. Jackson at home. Jax, to his friends. He’s being filmed, like he always is, but this time he’s got his arm around his beautiful wife, is watching his wonderful children from a safe remove as they play out of the camera’s range. Later, in the evening, when the cameras are gone and his wife is in another room, he goes to the bathroom. He looks in the mirror, puts his fingers in his mouth and pulls back his lips to look at his teeth. When archaeologists find his body, will they know he was an actor?
Malory Antony is a dedicated slacker whose usual medium of expression is a power walk in the middle of the working day. They resort to prose when their thoughts get too big for their feet. They are a Pākehā writer based in Tāmaki in Aotearoa.